Ok, so I ended up playing quite a few hours of this game. And even this final beta for around 3-4 hours.
The first thing I'll say is that's it's a major disappointment. A huge empty lifeless world. I was expecting a LOT more.
- Huge empty world filled with water and small islands
- No story
- No dialogues, voice over (ridiculous for a so-called AAA game)
- Very little attention to details
- Average to poor graphics (imo) even though the water looks great the rest looks bad
- No real goal
- No character customization at the start even though the game is based on "looks" and cosmetic items
- No splitscreen (poor for a game that is about social experience)
- Awkward combat
- Generic repetitive quest that felt tedious
- Game based on cosmetic items and the game will soon have microtransactions that will sell this
- Full price game with free2play economics
- Seems like the game depends on friends goofing around
- I hardly found anyone. (Maybe 6-7 ships in nearly 10 hours of play)
- Matchmaking problems even in the final beta
+ Water is great looking
+ Game relies a lot on goofing and spending time with friends, so it can be fun for few hours.
I think the problem with this game is there isn't really any goal. You are asked to go from point A to point B, get a chest, go back to point A, sell the chest for gold, use the gold to buy cosmetic stuff. You do that 5-6 times to get some 1000 gold so you can buy a hat or a coat.
Even the trading company quests are just mindless jobs where you go from one point get animals like chickens and go to point B, to get the same stuff.
Overall it just looks like a big open empty world. They added beautiful water to fill. You spend most of your time going from point to point. And when you happen to see another ship they'll probably just attack you. But I actually understand that, they are just looking for a bit of action after just sailing aimlessly for hours...
So the worse part of this is that they are calling it a service. This is not just about making a game selling it at full price and hope people enjoy it. This is also about how to make people spend more and more money after they spend the initial entry $60 fee to enter the service. If cosmetic items is what this game is all about, having microtransactions for cosmetic item is even worse. If I criticise other games for doing it, I'm sorry I got to do the same for this game.
For those who didn't play it, I wouldn't suggest you to buy it. If you really need to test it. Get it for 1 month on game pass and see for yourself. Ask yourself are you going to play this non stop for 6-7 months? No? Then don't buy the game, rent it till you get bored...